Feedback the city received during the first leg of its e-scooter pilot this past fall is mixed, with several residents critiquing the program, a check-in report from administration says.
On Feb. 14, Shawn McCauley, city manager of business retention and expansion, updated a council committee about the pilot. Beginning in September 2021, the pilot will pick up later this year and run until December 2022. While the city’s municipal enforcement department did not receive or respond to any complaints about e-scooter-related bylaw infractions, the city received a mix of feedback from 51 respondents in a public survey with varying support for the program.
Forty-nine per cent of respondents did not support the program at all, while 41 per cent supported some aspects of the program. Ten per cent of respondents had no negative feedback.
McCauley said the brunt of negative feedback centered on the e-scooters being an eyesore when left behind on trails and sidewalks, sometimes obstructing pedestrians. Residents said dedicated spaces to park e-scooters could help fix the problem. Respondents also expressed concerns about safety issues, citing already overcrowded trails.
Further, because St. Albert mandates the use of helmets, many felt this regulation defeated the purpose of introducing e-scooters, with McCauley noting residents don't carry helmets around "just in case."
Pilot sees almost 12,000 trips
Since it began on Sept. 7, the program saw 6,247 unique users, who took a total of 11,921 trips with an average distance of 2.5 kilometres.
Coun. Ken MacKay said the data on usage demonstrates the program’s popularity, adding that he has received feedback the scooters do not have a high enough speed limit (St. Albert e-scooters are capped at 15 km/h, while some cities allow speeds of up to 20 km/h).
“Whenever you have something popular and well used, there’s going to be people who take it too far and don’t follow the rules,” MacKay said. “If we can somehow clean up some of those irritants, I’m pretty confident this is successful, and we should see how it goes going forward.”
Coun. Natalie Joly said she is a “little bit more hesitant” about the benefits of the program, noting feedback she gathered from the council’s youth advisory committee indicates the e-scooters “ruin the scenery” and are being used for fun rather than as alternative transportation.
“For youth, paying for scooters doesn’t make sense when they can use the bus for free year-round,” Joly said.
Joly said from her own perspective, having the e-scooters only on sidewalks and trails is “extremely confusing,” because privately-owned scooters are only permitted on roads.
While e-scooters are supposed to be collected from neighbourhood sidewalks within a period of two days, Joly said she has noticed scooters in her neighbourhood sticking around for far longer.
“I don’t think we should put it on our residents to have to call these companies every two days because there’s been a scooter ditched outside their house,” Joly said.
On Feb. 15, Coun. Sheena Hughes said she was in the process of working on an amendment to the pilot program that will address the issues of residents.
“We need to make this so that it’s a lot more accommodating for people who are not riding e-scooters,” Hughes said, noting she believes there should be specific pickup and drop off locations throughout the city. “These things are everywhere. They’ve being left in front of people’s yards and not being picked up, and even if they are, two days of having somebody else's [scooter] in front of your yard is not necessarily what people asked for."
During council on Tuesday, Feb. 22, Hughes gave notice of her motion to amend the pilot program to add dropoff and pickup sites for the e-scooters and to no longer permit the e-scooters to be dropped off or picked up outside of the approved locations.
The motion will come forward for debate at a future council meeting.
